Pete’s journey didn’t start when he received his cancer diagnosis. Nope, his dying plate of a meal was served with an aperitif in the form of losing his father to cancer two months earlier. It’s as if life was cleansing his palate in preparation for the hot turd-on-weck about to be served. It was devastating to watch him face the loss of his father then try to find some sort of equilibrium in order to move forward only to be upended. It brings tears to my eyes when I look back on how much I didn’t know what to do for him, how much I felt inadequate in every moment, and how much I wished I could have calmed his fears. But, ultimately, I came to understand that that was not my purpose. I realized that I didn’t need to fill every quiet moment with words, I didn’t need to have everything or anything figured out, and that I absolutely shouldn’t go down the black hole with him. I was there to be the antidote to the darkness. We all were. His family, his friends, and I—we were all points of light in his night sky to help him find his way home.
It was remarkable witnessing Pete navigate this mindfuck-soulfuck of a body slam, twist in the road. There was a certain poetry to it. There’s a darkness that envelops the mind when this slim thread of an existence we call life is threatened. That free fall into oblivion is then followed by a deep calm, which at first feels like surrender but it isn’t. It’s followed by a sense of acceptance and release that then metamorphosizes into a serene state of grace. That’s when the fight begins. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was getting a life lesson on how to overcome almost anything. A lesson that I would use over and over again in my life. As Pete disintegrated and reemerged, I learned that the fight only ends when you give up.
The journey ahead would be filled with stomach-knotting, heart-racing, vomit-inducing sob fests, and that was just me. I was completely unprepared for what came next, and yet I was totally ready to stand by his side as he wandered through the dangerous part of the city that was his life now. The next twelve months, at times, felt like the longest of our lives. Each day came with a new set of worries and hurdles and each night ended with the illusion of hope. There was a quiet dignity to how Pete handled it all. He was nothing short of heroic.
Senior year was a bit of a blur, to say the least. With my new internship, job, and taking care of my boyfriend, I turned into a motivated machine. Most kids slack off during their last year of school, but I’d never been busier or had more drive and purpose. Truth be told, there was no time to slow down or hesitate. Pete’s life was on the line and the first three months were the most complicated. A week after being diagnosed, Pete had to have a very intricate surgery in which many of the surrounding organs had to be removed and examined to eradicate the spreading cancer. If your brain just did a backflip visualizing what I just described, then I think you’d be relieved to know that neither of us knew exactly the nature of the surgery he was about to have at the time. It really didn’t matter. We were both in a state of shock.
After the surgery went to plan, he had chemotherapy and radiation treatments for a few months that were so severe that it required him to stay in the hospital for a week at a time. So each day after school let out, I’d head to either my internship at the record label or to my new job at a pet store. Then, around 7 P.M., I’d get myself over to the hospital to snuggle with Pete on his hospital bed until they kicked me out after midnight. When he wasn’t at the hospital, I was at his house until I was sent home. Battling cancer can be an isolating experience, but I was determined to be there every second I could. My heart and my embrace were all I had to offer, and they were his for the taking.
We had some sweet times during the year of hell. I can’t remember why, but for some reason they had placed him in the children’s ward at the hospital, which was a little bizarre, but it didn’t stop us from having fun. It’s funny the things you remember, like sneaking meatball subs into the hospital or hanging out the window smoking weed … you know, to combat nausea … it was for medicinal purposes! Then there were the times when we’d have The Germs blasting on the boom box while he was puking his guts out from the chemo, or when I’d make him my famous grilled cheese sandwiches with mustard squeezed into heart shapes on top. Perhaps the gentlest moments were when he was feeling good for a few hours and we’d lie in each other’s arms, watching TV like a normal couple. You take what you can get.
Over the course of that year, I learned to stop looking backward and focus on what was right in front of me. To this day, that’s how I deal with problems. I don’t dwell on what just happened and/or the things I can’t control. I don’t wallow in misery. I move forward with great deliberation and force and do not allow sentimentality to get in the way. Not because I’m a hard ass, I’m actually quite the softie, but because I gained a singular perspective about what really matters and how not to confuse real problems with the artificial day-to-day nonsense we exaggerate for ourselves. That was Pete’s gift to me.
After a year of treatment, I’m happy to say that Pete survived his bout with the blight. Unfortunately, he and I didn’t. SHIT-FUCKER-HELL!!!! Soon after he was cleared, Pete dumped me. I was devastated then, but looking back now, I think, perhaps, I was a constant reminder of the year of hell he wanted to put behind him. Perhaps he wanted to set me free because he was back to square one and rebooting his life. Perhaps we had done what we’d each come to do in each other’s lives and it was just time. Either way, it didn’t matter. I was a rock for that whole year of hell, but at the moment we broke up, I completely fell apart. I think I needed to. Like I said before, I’m a real softie. Pete and I never lost touch and are still friends to this day. He’ll always have a special place in my heart.
There were other disappointments waiting for me as well. I thought the music business was going to be something mystical like the Garden of the Hesperides. But alas, my amazing internship ended up being anything but magical. In fact, it was a total buzzkill. What fresh hell was this?!? Where was the sex? The drugs? The MOTHERFUCKINGROCKANDROLL?!?! I had a lot to learn about paying your dues. It turns out that in the music biz, the top executives are the only ones who get to play and live the glamorous life. Everyone else is just a grunt who gets free tickets to shows that nobody wants to go to. And I was the lowliest of grunts, essentially a telemarketer. About 99 percent of what I did was pick up the phone, call radio stations, and say, “Here’s this new single; we want you to put it into rotation, mmmkay?” Some people are just born salesmen and know how to talk the talk. I am not a bullshit artist, or as Mel Brooks would say, a “stand-up philosopher,” on any level. Anyone who’s done it will tell you a hard sell is uncomfortable as fuck and requires a lot of confidence in yourself and what you’re selling. Short of that, you better like the taste of urine because you’re pissing in the wind. I didn’t know what I was doing, and nobody ever said, “Hey, just call up and make friends with these people! Once they get to know you, they might listen to what you’re selling.” Because, essentially, that’s what networking is all about. I was so nervous that I’d cut right to the chase. I didn’t even talk about the fucking weather. “Hi,” I’d say quickly. “About this album, you’re going to play it, right? No? What’s that? I should go kill myself? Okay. Thanks. Bye.” I was a pathetic saleswoman. It just wasn’t in me.
So when I wasn’t making an ass out of myself on the phone, I had the mind-numbing job of putting hundreds of CDs in envelopes and mailing them out. But I didn’t care. I was living the dream, man. I mean, just the people I was meeting were inspirational. I was so serious about my future career I would take any opportunity to go to music conventions just to practice the art of networking. I remember this one time I drove down to Rochester with a friend to attend a music conference. We saw tons of band showcases and sat in on lectures about making a demo and how to break into the business. I met a super-famous music engineer named Eddie Kramer, who’d been behind the boards for legendary artists like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Joe Cocker, KISS, The Rolling Stones, and Whitesnake. (Yeah! I said Whitesnake!) H
e even recorded the original legendary Woodstock festival. He was the man, and he became kind of a mentor to me. When I was stuck not knowing what the next step toward my dream of working at a major record label was because there was no School of Rock or Music Business 101, he’s the one that told me, “Go to college and major in communications.” So that’s what I did.
I didn’t have the typical college experience at SUNY Buffalo State. I lived at home instead of in the dorms. While other students were binge drinking, pledging sororities, and fucking frat boys, I was putting in my time at the bars and studying MTV. Hey, it all sounds like fun and games, but this shit was serious! Seriously badass! I majored in communications, but designed my curriculum around music. I took business and marketing courses along with music theory, piano, and singing to complete my electives. Don’t get me wrong, I can hold a tune, but I’m no Suzi Quatro!
I remember one time, as part of my grade, I actually had to get up in front of an auditorium filled with thirty-five or forty music students and teachers and sing an old Italian classic called “Dolce Scherza.” I had practiced all semester. I was mentally prepared, but it seemed my body had other plans. I had dressed up in recital attire right down to my best Payless heels. As I stood there on the stage, looking out at all the real musicians I went to school with, listening to the opening bars of my song, my ankles began to tremble and wouldn’t stop. I felt like a fledgling drag queen wearing her first stilettos. It was so disconcerting. I remember thinking, What the fuck is happening to me? Am I having a ground-up seizure? I was completely out of control of my own limbs. As I sang, I commanded my body to stop shaking. Listen, asshole (and all other parts), this is not the time! That didn’t work at all. I decided that directly after this performance my body and I would need to have a serious Janet Jackson–inspired talk about who was in control.
From then on I made it a point to get up in front of people as often as I could, and when my ankles flinched I would hum that Italian classic to myself while mentally reenacting the hobbling scene from Misery. It’s how I’ve managed my nerves going forward. So when my body says, Nope, I’m not doing this anymore, my brain starts singing “Dolce Scherza.” It’s a brilliant coping mechanism and not at all that strange to hum aloud and hobble around in public. IT HELPS, OKAY?!
It was around that time that it occurred to me that if I wanted to manage and promote bands, I should probably get a better understanding of what it is they go through. So I started my own acoustic cover band with my buddy Mike, called Blonde on Blonde. If you didn’t look too closely, we kind of resembled Gregg Allman and Edie Brickell and had a reputation for killing it in many friends’ living rooms, as well as two local dive bars. I put myself in the line of fire in any way I could: dealing with cocky club owners, exhausted tour managers, confused booking agents, lazy label reps, dramatic radio people, fourth-tier roadies, drunken local yokels, you name it! It proved to be very useful because the road to a successful career in music is paved with a cavalcade of shitballs being thrown at you, so learning how to duck and weave is critical. After a while, I perfected my signature move, which was a combo duck, weave, sachet, jazz hands, and “look over there!”
During my time in college, I added three more music internships to my growing résumé—with a promoter, a radio station, and another label, Rhapsody Music, owned by local icon and “hit maker,” Jerry Meyers, who had worked with the likes of Neil Diamond, Dolly Parton, and Barry Manilow. I was making friends everywhere, which led to my very first on-camera gig interviewing area bands for a public-access TV show. To me, this might as well have been MTV!! But it was an epic night of missteps. First off, they sent me to a show at a club, but I was under twenty-one, and they wouldn’t let me in. I snuck in by picking up gear in the loading area out back and walking it in like I was a roadie (think Baby carrying a watermelon into the club in the movie Dirty Dancing). Second, I was nervous as a motherfucker and had no idea what I was doing. Third, I made the cardinal sin of calling the band the wrong name—instead of Grain Assault, I called them Grain of Salt—and they made sure to, painfully, correct me live on TV. Horrifying! If you know anything about bands, you know their names are sacrosanct. I might as well have called their mothers whores. It would have been slightly more forgivable. And last, but certainly not least, as soon as the interview started, our lights turned on, and the security recognized me from earlier and kicked me out of the club. My first day in “the showbiz” was an ignominious fucktastrophe!!
“I had a great fuckin’ time. But it was definitely the hardest thing I have ever done … That’s what she said!”
—Evan Rachel Wood
My entire time in college, I dated a really talented and respected guitar player in a local heavy metal band with a decent following. He was as close as you could get to a local rock star in Buffalo. He had perfected the lifestyle. From his music, to his hair, to his inner asshole (an absolute necessity if you want to be a panty-dropper). I was so in love, and pretty soon my whole life centered on him and the band. I was their promoter, their roadie, their flyer-putter-upper—I was doing everything. I also used the band for any projects I was doing for school. In one class I had to design a mock magazine cover, so I put them on Rolling Stone. I came up with my own Lollapalooza-style festival and used them as the headliners. Just so we’re clear, I was more Sharon Osbourne than Yoko Ono!
Anyway, my heavy metal boyfriend was my initiation to all things rock ’n’ roll. I’d go to school, go to work, and do my internship, then go straight to his house and do him or whatever we had to do for the band. Are you seeing a pattern here? So, no, I wasn’t playing beer pong, Saran-wrapping my passed-out roommate to a couch, or setting anything on fire. My biggest concern wasn’t drinking on the weekends or drawing dicks on people’s faces. I was having a blast, but I was hustling. While I was out I was pressing flesh and making sure people would show up to my boyfriend’s gigs because that’s what a real promoter would be doing: always working it. That was my idea of fun. In the immortal words of Pharrell and Jay Z, “I’m a hustler, baby. I just want you to know. It ain’t where I been, it’s where I’m ’bout to go.” I’m still like that now when I go out. I always feel better when I have something to do or a reason for being. It didn’t take long before I started getting antsy. I wanted more from my life than this city had to offer. I yearned for better opportunities and broader horizons. I was ready to take the necessary steps. The scene in Buffalo was starting to close in around me, and it was starting to feel like it was time for me to get the fuck out of Dodge.
There was one big problem: I was super motivated and working my ass off, but my boyfriend appeared to be working really hard at being a medium-sized fish in a shrinking pond (with the exception of his reign as New York state foosball champion, of course. Long live the king!). There was a certain point where it felt like I couldn’t get him to leave the house unless he had a gig or a foosball tournament. He’d sit in front of the TV watching football and get irritated when I’d beg him to do anything other than that. We began to fight constantly. I was ready to help him take his band to the next level, which meant moving out of the city. But it seemed like he didn’t want to leave the comfort of the fading glow of his current spotlight. Like the old saying goes, “You can lead a jackass to water, but you can’t make him do the two-step.”
The closer I got to graduation, the more and more I realized I needed way more money if I was planning to shuffle out of Buffalo. The most immediate solution to my problem was questionable, at best, but it ended up becoming an unexpected life lesson. One that would reignite years of angst and self-doubt before putting me on the road to recovery. And it happened, of all places … at Hooters. That’s right, the restaurant that probably started one day when two guys were sitting around and one of them said, “I really wish there was a place we could go to eat where all of the women have huge knockers that we could stare at but we could pretend we weren’t because they also serve food.” That’s right, the home of objectificat
ion and wings (I made that up. Pretty catchy right?)—with probably the single most revealing and unflattering company uniform in the history of uniforms (with the exception of the 2014 Colombian Women’s Cycling Team)—turned out to be my turning point.
I really needed a job that paid more than minimum wage, and since I had zero work experience, my options were fairly limited. My brother had a friend who worked at Hooters, and she suggested that I fill out an application. Being a former stripper, working at Hooters was no big deal to her (again, from another one of my favorite rappers, Missy Elliott: “Ain’t no shame, ladies do your thang. Just make sure you ahead of the game.” Rappers really are the best when it comes to business and acquisitions). Plus, she was a cute rocker chick who had teased-out long brown hair, wore short-shorts, and had her tits out on a daily basis anyway. I was frightened. I had spent my whole life hiding my balloons and now I was just supposed to float them out for everyone to see? Not only that, I had never waited a table in my life. She told me not to worry and that I would be perfect. I said, “How does having no experience at something make you perfect for it?” To which she quickly replied, “You have big tits! You could spit on their wings as you put them on the table and you’d still be perfect.”
Everybody Curses, I Swear! Page 6